Opioid Crisis: No Easy Fix to Its Social and Economic Determinants

Vermont responds to its opioid crisis.

Vermont is one of the more forward-thinking states in the nation with a history of taking groundbreaking approaches to complex social issues. In his Jan 8, 2014 State of the State Address, Vermont Governor Peter Shumlin announced that Vermont was in the midst of an opioid addiction epidemic. Though Vermont had called attention to its opioid crisis, it soon became clear that many other states sh...

No such thing as an easy (or EC) fix.

To the Editor: In “No such thing as an easy (or EC) fix,” Trussell et al. [1] offer a number of explanations for the recent findings that some studies in which women were offered enhanced (“easy”) access to EC failed to produce a reduction in pregnancy rates. These results are indeed both perplexing and disappointing. However, they in no way indicate that EC “doesn't work” or support the author...

The Opioid Crisis and Its Consequences.

How to fix the obesity crisis.

If current trends continue, an excess of weight will surpass smoking as the primary cause of preventable deaths in the U.S. Health experts, however, often overlook the best near-term strategy for stopping the obesity epidemic: behavior modification methods that have been shown to change people's eating and exercise habits. Illustration by Bryan Christie. Although science has revealed a lot abou...

No quick fix for social science in public health.

Editor – The perspective piece by Williams et al. on the contribution of social science to malaria control reveals the predicament of many social scientists working in public health (1). The authors correctly point out that social scientists want to adopt a theoretical and critical approach, but that such research would not be deemed useful for programmes. They have not found a way out of this ...